My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Want your own personal wind turbine?

Home wind turbines have become the must-have home improvement among people eager to help save the planet and flaunt their green credentials.

Dubbed 'the ultimate green fashion statement', are selling in their thousands amid claims they can cut household electricity bills by 30 per cent.

But now environmental campaigners say the windmills are not quite what they claim to be - and may actually do more harm than good.

As well as being noisy and unsightly, they barely produce enough electricity to power a hairdryer in many houses.

They also do nothing to tackle greenhouses gases, while there are far better ways to cut down on energy bills.

Although there are currently just 650 home wind turbines installed that number is set to grow massively as the makers of the most popular wind turbine, Windsave, have had orders of more than 15,000 ahead of Christmas for their WS1000 unit which sells for just under £1,500 at B&Q.

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Good. Perhaps if enough people waste their own money on wind turbines the word will get out about how inefficient they really are - hopefully taxpayers will be spared from being ripped off because of those things.

Ah, ive seen one of these at B&Q myself. Im also quite knowledgeable on the subject of small-scale renewable energy... looked into it myself once, as a way to both save money and produce some enviromental benefit. Unlike most customers, I did the math on both, and found that it just wasn't a realistic way to achieve either aim, where electricity is concerned.

Solar water-heating, however, I found can be a good investment - even in the poor weather of the UK. Its surprisingly complicated to install though, with a need for backup heating, antifreeze in the pipes...

The only situation where small-scale power generation for a home makes any sense is for remote, off-grid properties, where it can be cheaper than running the power lines.

There is one other benefit of wind or solar power though - once someone finds their batteries can only hold so much energy, and their generator supply so much power, thats a very effective way to get them to remember to turn the lights off. When using grid power, there is quite a mental disconnect between usage and billing. People seem to have trouble realising thet energy is money. They use it without thought, and just pay the resulting bills without reading them.

Although it is true that the payback on these is quite poor, it is a remarkabley crappy article.

First off, 500 W is not nothing, maybe 25% of a normal household load. A hair dryer is a really misleading comparision, because they are power intense but used for a short burst. Eight 60 W bulbs would be a more reasonable way of thinking about it.

As for greenhouse gases, depends entirely on what supplies the 500 W instead.

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My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)